Page 116 of Cast in Conflict

“The cohort—”

“It is too much a part of her at the moment; she cannot separate her concerns from theirs. It is why she is here, and why they are trying to reach her.”

“And I’m the outsider.”

“Inasmuch as an outsider has ever gotten this close to Sedarias, yes.”

“But you’re here!”

“Ah, no. No, I am not here in the way you are. She can usually hear my voice; she can certainly see the consequences of actions in my response. But she is not in a place I can now reach. You are.”

“And I’m in a place that can reach her, too.”

“Yes. You know what you have to do. You started it when you asked Hope to drop you into Sedarias’s storm. This is its eye.”

Kaylin didn’t ask how long they had. And she didn’t ask what she should, or shouldn’t, say. She understood that Helen didn’t know. She thought Helen was wrong. Helen understood people because she had to; she knew how to make them feel at home, and feel safe there. Kaylin had none of that ability. She couldn’t read minds. She couldn’t, unless someone communicated it, know what they wanted, what they needed, or worse, what would make them snap like dry kindling.

She had had to learn it the hard way. By observing—when observation was safe, or even possible. Or by making mistakes.

Even here, in the heart of Sedarias’s mind—and she had no other word for it, but hoped to hells that no one ever walked into her mind-space like this—she had no better sense of who Sedarias was, of what she wanted.

She probably didn’t want broken standards and crushed grass and an endless vista of stone; the only thing that implied life had been that grass. And the water, maybe. Kaylin had been following the rush of water to its eventual destination, and had found Sedarias before river met ocean.

Now she wondered where the water was going. Maybe it was headed to another cliff, and would become a waterfall.

Ugh. Water was easier to think about than Sedarias, here. If the cohort, who knew her and loved her and lived with her, didn’t know what to do, how could anyone assume she would?

But the marks on her arm were spinning like concentric, magical bracelets. So maybe it was time to really think instead of feeling hard done by. She turned to look in this eye of the storm; she had seen Mandoran and Sedarias; Terrano had been a disembodied voice.

As she looked, as the light cast by the raised runes on her arms brightened the stillness and alleviated the darkness, the two remained: Sedarias, Mandoran. Mandoran wasn’t obviously trapped—there was no cage, he wasn’t bound—but his feet touched nothing; Sedarias’s rested firmly on stone.

They were speaking. She couldn’t hear them. She could see Sedarias’s expression. And the back of Mandoran’s head.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” Mandoran said.

“Kind of getting that impression. Not sure you should be, either.”

“I can’t leave.”

“I know. Where are the rest of you?”

“You saw Terrano. Or heard him. The rest of us are here, as well.”

“But I can only see you—”

“Sedarias is very focused at the moment. Very.”

“And she can’t hear you.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” She could almost hear the eye roll.

“She hasn’t tried to cut you in two?”

He laughed; the laughter was wild and bitter. “Is that what you honestly believe?”

“She’s in control of the space. If she wanted you gone—”

“She never wants us gone.” His voice, stripped of sarcasm, sounded exhausted.

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